June 8, 2004: Powell, Rice Confront Gonzales over Secret Torture Memo

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell learn of the two-year-old Justice Department torture memo (see August 1, 2002) from the Washington Post article revealing its existence (see June 8, 2004). Both confront White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. According to a senior White House official, Rice “very angrily said there would be no more secret opinions on international and national security law,” and threatens to go to President Bush if Gonzales keeps them out of the loop on anything else. Powell admiringly comments, as they are leaving Gonzales’s office, that Rice was “in full Nurse Ratched mode,” a reference to the head nurse of the mental hospital in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Neither of them take their objections to Vice President Cheney, says the official: that would be a much more dangerous course. [Washington Post, 6/25/2007]